Spiking to become an offence in the UK: Will this benefit women’s safety?

Violence against women and girls has been called a ‘national emergency.’

Transcript

00:00idea that if you're a man's property, i.e. you're with a man, other men need to back

00:10off because otherwise you might get challenged from the man. But if you're not with another

00:14man, then you're fair game. That's the attitude. So there's so little respect for women in

00:22there, isn't there? It's all about respecting the man's property in inverted commas. Those

00:28programmes which give space to men to talk with other men about what it means to be a

00:34man and what sort of man they want to be, what kind of masculinity they want to adopt,

00:41particularly when it's led by people who are inspired by feminist ideas and ideas of equality

00:46and respect between the sexes, research shows that those kinds of interventions can be really

00:52effective. Dr Lewis's report set out a number of key solutions which are required to ensure

00:58equal safety for women on nights out. These solutions included support, knowledge and

01:03change. The report stated that venues should be expected to meet agreed standards around

01:08the safety of unwanted sexual intrusions in order to fulfil a zero-tolerance approach.

01:14I'm glad that the new Labour government recognises that spiking is a really significant form

01:20of violence against women and that something needs to be done about it. I'm a bit sceptical

01:26about the value of the law because spiking is already a criminal activity, so it can be

01:32prosecuted under the Offences Against Persons Act. I think it would be much more effective

01:39for the government to be doing those other sorts of initiatives, initiatives that work

01:43with young men to help them think about a better form of masculinity, initiatives that

01:53train venue staff.